


The Case

by i_claudia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, M/M, Off-screen Character Death, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-11-01
Updated: 2008-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Begun as a NaNo project one year -- the original idea was to trace the evolution of the relationship between Harry and Draco as they teamed up to find a criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/13602.html#cutid1). (01 November 2008)

**1\. Beginnings** (G, 435 words)

Draco Malfoy was busy pretending he was the King of England. It wasn’t something he did _all_ that often, really, (and if Dobby ever told anyone about the old purple sheet and Transfigured crown Draco had ordered him to make Draco was going to iron the house elf’s hands _himself_ ,) but the new freedom that had come with his Hogwarts letter was too delicious to resist. The stool in the robes shop made him almost a whole foot taller, and he wondered if he’d be as tall as his father if he stood on his tiptoes. Not that he tried that as the witch bustled around him with her pins. Standing on tiptoes just wasn’t done, if you were a Malfoy. It was definitely a Weasley thing to do, though, Draco decided. He wondered when he’d see his first Weasley.

It was easy from that height to feel like everyone else was working for him, and he shut his eyes for a minute, pretending the plain black robe hanging past his wrists and ankles was another color – green, maybe, or purple, which his grandfather had told him was the color emperors wore. Draco wanted to be an emperor when he grew up. No one would tell him what to do or make him wash behind his ears; he could eat all the Chocolate Frogs he wanted and maybe even have a different broomstick for every day of the week.

Squeezing his eyes even more tightly shut, he pictured the Minister coming in the door of the shop with a big smile on his face, bowing to Draco and taking off his hat, telling him that the wizards of England needed an emperor to save them, and would Draco mind very much taking time out of his schedule to help them out? Behind him Draco could see his parents: his mother was smiling, the corners of her eyes crinkled up with happiness, and his father stood tall beside her, looking proud.

The bells on the door jingled, and Draco’s eyes popped open. It couldn’t possibly be _true_ , he thought breathlessly, but a tingly feeling ran down his arms and into his fingers as he looked around eagerly, half-expecting to see Minister Fudge standing in the doorway with his bowler hat sitting jauntily on his head.

The only person standing near the door was a scruffy looking boy in clothes five times too large for him, pushing a pair of ridiculous glasses farther up his nose and looking nervous. Draco huffed moodily and turned to scowl at the wall in front of him, feeling cheated.

Nothing exciting _ever_ happened to him.


	2. Chapter 2

**2\. Middles** (PG, 314 words)

It was almost over. He was almost done. Draco stepped back from the Cabinet, wincing as his shirt caught on the healing scab running across his chest. Dropping his tools into the box next to him, he sank to the floor, his legs finally giving out. The piles of long-forgotten things stretched out above where he lay; looming towers climbing up into the dark recesses of the far-off ceiling. There was a time, he knew, when he would have done anything to get in here, to explore the vastness of the Room of Hidden Things and sift through things other people had left behind. Now there were other things to worry about, bigger things. He hardly even had the energy to get up in the mornings, never mind poke around an enormous room for useless things.

He knew he looked awful; he’d known even before Pansy had tried to hint at it in a less-than-diplomatic manner. One’s health tended to take a downward turn when a Dark Lord had your family under his thumb, ready to crush them as soon as you made a misstep. Draco reached up, putting an arm over his eyes, resting for just a minute as red lights danced behind his eyelids. He was so tired. It would be so easy to let go, right here on the stone floor, to forget about everything he had to do and let the Room hide him so he could just _sleep_...

But then the Dark Lord would do who-knew-what to his family, and the world would descend to another, fouler level of hell. With an effort, Draco heaved himself back up onto his feet, picking up his tools again. A few more days and he’d be done, he reminded himself. A few more days, and he could see his parents again; that was worth any price the Dark Lord made him pay.


	3. Chapter 3

**3\. Ends** (G, 285 words)

Standing in the Great Hall, Draco Malfoy managed one last flash of anger toward Harry Potter. One last sneer at his old rival who stood looking a little lost amidst the grief and survivors’ tears. He looked even more terrible than usual, though perhaps not quite as terrible as he’d seemed when Draco had seen him in the Manor... but Draco wasn’t going to think of that, wasn’t going to remember anything from that unpleasantness. Instead he narrowed his eyes and concentrated hating Potter: his abysmal hair, his ridiculous glasses, the torn, mud-stained robes hanging off his skinny, knobby frame. Really, there was just so much to hate about him; he provided endless opportunities for sly remarks and wicked implications.

But mostly, Draco hated that Harry Potter had saved him. _Saved_ him, as if he were just another screaming fan. Draco wanted nothing to do with Potter and his stupid scar and his hero complex and his posse of Gryffindor do-gooders. He almost wished Potter had just left him in the Room.

Almost.

Because above the familiar heat of his anger, Draco could feel his pulse beating, thrumming against his skin, and he reveled in it. He sucked in a breath, wondering at the cool fullness of his lungs. His mother smoothed a shaky hand over his hair, and he looked up at her, soaking in the precious sight of her face, worn but beautiful still, and above her his father standing tall, watching over them despite bruises and uncertainty.

So maybe Draco could forgive Potter a little, tiny bit, just for a moment.

But he was pretty sure that at the end of that moment, he’d find something else about Potter to hate again.


	4. Chapter 4

**4\. Insides** (PG, 353 words)

Before Ginny’s death, Harry had been a common sight in the Ministry. He enjoyed his work with the Aurors and hardly ever called in sick. He liked to visit Hermione during the lunch break and chat; sometimes with Ron, sometimes not. He hated the swarms of reporters and fans he sometimes attracted in the atrium and avoided the area as a rule; he unsuccessfully tried to persuade Minister Shacklebolt to let him hook up a private Floo in his office.

Mostly, though, he enjoyed the feeling of being on the inside of some great slow change in the world, of being on the front lines of a quiet war that went far beyond Death Eaters or the Order. This time, he thought, it wasn’t up to him alone to save everyone, and he liked that too, liked the feeling that he was part of the inner circle without the pressure of being the One.

Ginny’s death was a betrayal of that trust in the goodness of the world. He’d thought – looking back now he saw that it had been a foolish hope – he’d thought that maybe now life or fate or some invisible hand or whatever was guiding the universe would leave him alone to live a quiet life as normally as possible. Finding Ginny on the floor of their flat, the sunlight streaming in and making her hair shine bizarrely bright against the pale blueness of her skin, had killed that dream. The swarms of paparazzi circling her funeral like carrion crows had driven the last nail into its coffin.

With Ron’s help and despite Kingley’s disapproval, Harry installed the private Floo in his office, but he barely used it. He retreated, moving back to Grimmauld Place and surrounding himself with case files as Kreacher muttered worriedly in the background and left sandwiches in surprising places, perhaps hoping that Harry might eat one if he was caught off-guard in the library by the sudden discovery of corned beef on rye.

He would find Ginny’s killer. All it required was patience, desire, and absolutely no distractions, and Harry had all three in abundance.


	5. Chapter 5

**5\. Outsides** (PG, 247 words)

 

Harry had taken to sitting in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, watching the sunlight trace back and forth across the floor and listening to the soft murmuring creaks of the old house. He shut off the Floo connection unless he needed to use it, and was steadfastly ignoring the number of letters piling up in the front hall.

He flipped a small box between his fingers absent-mindedly, staring blankly at the enormous old range top in one corner of the kitchen. The velvet of the box dragged slightly on the calluses of his fingers, and he concentrated on the sensation. _Flip. Flip._

He’d been hanging onto it for three and a half months, waiting for the perfect moment to present itself. The whole thing had laid itself out so neatly in his head: angels descending from a clear blue sky singing hosannas and Mrs. Weasley crying joyfully and getting everyone wet and Ginny looking radiant, laughing, with one hand tucked into his.

 _Flip, flip,_ the box whispered as it turned over and over again in his palm.

He never opened it. Exactly nine days after walking away from the Weasley family plot, wiping dirt off his hands almost convulsively onto his new black dress robes, he tucked the little velvet box into the bottom corner of the drawer which housed all his Weasley sweaters, closed the drawer, and Flooed to the Ministry to see if he could persuade Basil to let him into the Hall of Records.


	6. Chapter 6

**6\. Hours** (G, 402 words)

Draco had started reading the _Prophet_ after the war. After the trials and accusations had shut him up under house arrest, he’d raged and carried on and made threatening remarks along the lines of preferring a real prison like Azkaban and that Potter could stick his interfering busybody nose into someone else’s business, but no one except his mother and maybe the few house elves they had left had even pretended to care.

So he’d taken out his anger by spending hours drawing elaborate moustaches on all the photos in the paper. It felt juvenile, unfitting for a Malfoy, but Draco was sick of being a Malfoy, sick of being dismissed and imprisoned for being on the wrong side, sick of watching his father slowly crumble under the pressure that came with _living_.

When Potter’s photo appeared in the paper – which was at least once every day, the bastard – he got special treatment. Sometimes he had buckteeth; sometimes his new scribbled hair was bigger than the photo. Sometimes, when Draco was feeling particularly creative or malicious, he had spots on his face and enormous ears.

The anger is controlled now that he’s free, kept tightly locked inside his chest. He’s long since accepted the fact that no one cares if he’s angry or whether or not the Malfoys are being treated unjustly. Being a prisoner in his own home twice has taught him control he never thought he'd have. He presents a smooth, polished face to the world, a face both his father and Snape had been unable to teach him before the war, and steadily forces people to accept him despite the mark on his left arm.

He still spends an hour every day reading the _Prophet_ even though his job keeps him busy enough without catching up on the sordid details of Mrs. Zabini’s latest intrigue or the Ministry’s scandals. From time to time he draws a scrawny beard on Potter, just for old time’s sake, but when the five-page memorial spread on Girl Weasley comes out with Potter’s face plastered on the front page he doesn’t even flip through it, just pushes it away and reaches for the next section.

He tells himself it’s because his father’s death is still too near; no one’s grief should be on public display. If Narcissa notices, she doesn’t say anything, just pats his arm and asks him quietly to pass the marmalade.


End file.
